In the spirit of MacRic, Sacedog and many others I am going to maintain a build thread to give back to this great community that has helped me understand what needs to be done to automate a home. I hope that through this thread, I will be able to receive advice on my plans and hopefully, that advice and this thread will be helpful to others in the future. I have spent many many hours reading this forum and hope I can give back just a little.

Wiring Notes:Since the house is being built by a developer I cannot do any of the wiring myself. For this reason, every single wire costs me. The focus of pre-wiring is primarily for anything I cannot wire after walls are up. I cannot access the second floor - the walkup attic has a tongue and grove plywood floor that is screwed and glued.

For Alarm:The home comes with pre-wires for all external doors and ground floor windows. I am paying an extra amount to home run all contacts and also to contact all upstairs windows. I will be going with an Elk M1 most likely - but the lack of a humidity sensor may push me to get an HAI.

For CATV/Ethernet:The home comes with 5 locations wired and terminated with 2 cat5/2coax. I am having those swapped with pipe chases or conduit. I want to run conduit to every location I would have that anyway - so this should save me a little money. I have spec'd out 6 2" PVC conduits run from basement to the attic. As well as 18 other conduit/pipe chases.

Lighting:I will be ALC/OnQ to all switches in the house.

Whole home audio:Pre-Wiring for 12 Zones.Will probably go with NuVo

Here are some pictures of the lot:

Basement dig out:

View from the front yard to the future house:

View from the back of the house (Whatever that metal thing is rusting in the woods will be removed by the builder):

Here is the plan for the first floor, I added in some changes by hand:

Here is the plan for the second floor:

The basement will be unfinished, but we had an architect draw up a plan for finishing the basement:

Also a plan for a finished attic:

My plan is to go room by room with diagrams, followed by images when built, followed by images when complete and automated.

We are going to start out with an easy room here, the Den and see what kind of feedback I get on these diagrams.

Room Purpose: This will be mostly used as an office until the office in the attic gets built. At that point we may turn it into a sitting room, or add bookshelves and make it a library.

H/A: The room has an occupancy sensor pre-wire, I placed it in the corner so it would not point pickup motion in the foyer. There are 3 cat5 cables run for ALC/OnQ. One for the recessed lights/switched outlets, one for the fan pre-wire (hoping someday for cat5 control on that) and one spare/scene.

H/A Goals: (1) Turn lights off if unoccupied for a specified period. (2) Turn lights on if occupied and time of day suggests it. (3) Turn lights on when in "vacation" or away mode to simulate occupancy. (4) Turn fan off if unoccupied for a specified period. (Wonder if the fan motion will cause that to never be the case??) (5) Turn the fan on if occupied and temperature suggests fan should be on.

Audio: Two speakers pre-wires in ceiling, and 16/4 and Cat5 run to a box next to the light switches.

Alright - I might actually be getting the hang of this Visio thing. Well, maybe, I had to recreate this diagram a second time because I somehow got to the point that Visio would crash upon opening the file. Seemed to be related to the legend.

Room Purpose: This will be mostly used for formal dining - holidays, etc. Most of the dining will occur in the breakfast room, or covered deck if the weather supports it.

H/A: The room has an occupancy sensor pre-wire, I placed it in the corner so it would not point pickup motion in the foyer. There are 5 cat5 cables run for ALC/OnQ. One for the chandelier, one for the sconces, 1 spare/scene. On the other wall, a three way for the chandelier and 1 spare/3way.

Audio: Two speakers pre-wires in ceiling, and 16/4 and Cat5 run to a box next to the light switches.

Security: Home run window, Glass Break, and Occupancy/Motion.

H/A Goals: (1) Turn lights off when unoccupied for a specified period. I don't think I would turn these on automatically, but we will see.

The wired dining room:

I do have a question for you peeps out there, I was originally going to have the LV contractor pull the CAT5 for the ALC/OnQ into the LV side of a gang box, and replace the LV gang with a scene switch once I was moved in and started deploying ALC/OnQ. However, at $40 a pull I could save some serious money if I pulled it myself after words to the downstairs switches. I searched the web but could not find one. Does anyone make a low voltage bracket with an open backend that attaches directly to an HV bracket? If I had that I could easily run the cat5 myself from the basement into this LV bracket and then drill a hole into the HV bracket and bring my wires over to the ALC/OnQ switches. Making sure I leave a 1/4 between the LV and HV and use the sheething supplied by ALC/OnQ.

For the DR, you may wish to orient the stereo speakers perpendicular or parallel to the long axis of the DR table, depending on if you want your guests, or you, to get better sound. With the low quality of in-ceiling speakers, if may not make much of a difference, but to some people it might.

Is your electrician familiar with ALC, and occupancy sensors? Sorry if I missed that bit in another thread.

As this Den room is first floor, with an unfinished basement, you can skimp, to some extent.

Dip the speaker wire to the keypad location, for change to a different system down the road.

When you finish the basement you need to decide if this room will ever have a TV/monitor, and which walls will ever have LAN/data/phone ports; it is a den/home office, after all.

Nice that you have some trees and hills around your house - great location.

Looking forward to your updates, and my learning from your mistakes.

Neurorad/Joe

Thanks for the feedback Neurorad. I am running zero CAT5 and Coax for data/TV. Any location on the second floor that needs a TV will have a pipe chase. Any location on the first floor I will wire myself for cat5/coax. The office/den will get a full suite of data/coax cables. I really hope to turn that into a library in the not too distant future. I am a software engineer, have many computers, etc. Things that just wont look great as the first thing you see when you enter a house.

Ha! Hopefully, my mistakes will be well documented enough that everyone can learn from them.

For the DR, you may wish to orient the stereo speakers perpendicular or parallel to the long axis of the DR table, depending on if you want your guests, or you, to get better sound. With the low quality of in-ceiling speakers, if may not make much of a difference, but to some people it might.

Is your electrician familiar with ALC, and occupancy sensors? Sorry if I missed that bit in another thread.

I am being a bit dense here I think.. I am not sure exactly what you mean by the speakers being parallel or perpendicular aren't those the opposite of each other? I had planned to have the speakers be centered over the dining room table and divide the room in thirds lengthwise and line up with the sconces. If that makes any sense? In the diagram they look a bit off center, is that what you are referring to?

As for speakers, I have heard decent things about the monoprice speakers.. And those may be used in rooms that don't get as much use. I have a pair of Niles OS-10's that will go on the open deck, and I might upgrade the speakers to something better (NHT? maybe) for the kitchen/covered deck.

Well, the LV person is familiar with occupancy sensors. The electrician in general is very knowledgeable. According to the builder, the electrical sub is a friend of his, and besides this development usually works in the 1 to 1.5 million land. So he is more familiar with the centralite, and other hard wired solutions. However, he has never used OnQ/ALC but when I explained it to him, he got it instantly and saw the advantages.

Why the walkup attic with tongue/groove decking? Do you need the space? Maybe you can save money and have that done a while after you move in and run all your wires to the 2nd floor yourself.

I assume you've read my endless posts about the use of flexible conduit to save on pre-wire costs.

Looks like a massive place....

Are you using standard visio stencils to make these drawings? and do it automatically count the parts? That looks pretty neat..if you do that for each room a LV contractor should be able to quote you a price for that.

What part of the country are you in?

I have a bunch of ALC gear waiting for me when i get home...soon I'll finally be installing that and can give first hand experience rather than hearsay...

Best of luck...you should probably have Dan move this thread to the showcase forum, but it may not get as much attention there.

Why the walkup attic with tongue/groove decking? Do you need the space? Maybe you can save money and have that done a while after you move in and run all your wires to the 2nd floor yourself.

Well, I didn't ask for it, it comes standard with the house as a quality "feature". I have thought about asking it to be removed, but that makes it harder for them to frame in the attic (I think) and it is nice to have a walk up attic with tons of storage possibilities. We certainly don't need the space, the reason we would finish it off is because 1) I like building projects - so I would do it myself. 2) I really want an out of the way office.

I assume you've read my endless posts about the use of flexible conduit to save on pre-wire costs.

Yes, no data/coax here. However, my conduit runs cost more than double yours at $130 each and are 2 inch.

Looks like a massive place....

It is more space than we need - however, quite frankly we are very happy with the construction quality and when we started looking at other places, they would be smaller but we kept wondering why we would give up square footage for a 9 inch crown instead of an 8 inch crown. The house is formal enough and additional formality didn't interest us.

Are you using standard visio stencils to make these drawings? and do it automatically count the parts? That looks pretty neat..if you do that for each room a LV contractor should be able to quote you a price for that.

Yep, using the standard stencils. The count in the legend is automatic. However, the legend is really annoying in that I can't add columns. I would like that feature so I didn't need additional legends.Well, I already have my quote from the LV guy. I have a 3 page long spreadsheet with every LV run that I am basing this off of.

What part of the country are you in?

Near Raleigh, NC.

I have a bunch of ALC gear waiting for me when i get home...soon I'll finally be installing that and can give first hand experience rather than hearsay...

Good! Can't wait to get some feedback. 100% reliable lighting control has me excited. I need to order some switches and scene switches so I can give those to the electric sub for depth reasons.

Best of luck...you should probably have Dan move this thread to the showcase forum, but it may not get as much attention there.

Good point. I might ask Dan to move it once it nears completion.... As of right now I am hoping that being in this forum it may get more feedback and be as useful as possible to people.

Thanks for chiming in MavRic - your build was one of them that made me realize how important build threads can be for both the person doing the thread and future people reading it.

H/A Equipment: The room has an occupancy sensor pre-wire, I placed it in the corner so it would not point pickup motion in the hallway. There are 3 cat5 cables run for ALC/OnQ. One for the recessed light, 1 for sconces, 1 relay for the bathroom vent. 1 Door contact.

H/A Goals: (1) Turn on the lights when occupied. (2) Turn on the vent fan if occupied for a specified period. (3) Turn off the vent fan if unoccupied for a specified period. (4) "Sleep" the fan (turn off and then back on later) if occupied for a specified period, then the fan is turned off. This is so guests would not be confused and tell me that my fan was broken because it wasn't turning off.

Ok - I updated the previous rooms posts to have a "goals" section. Any comments about the goals would be appreciated.

Also - I am starting to rethink having any of these 22/4 run in the first floor - I will make the final call during framing when I verify that I can get to every spot I need. The only reason to think I couldn't is if they put extra blocking in one joist cavity. I have seen that in a few of the cavities. At $40 per 22/4 run, if I can do almost the entire ground floor myself sensor and or ALC/OnQ wise I could save a lot of cake. Which would be nice, since today we just decided to upgrade the cabinets --- sigh.

If I am running my own 22/4 and then doing my own sensors are there good "wall plates" that you can mount occupancy and glass break sensors to? I don't really want just a cable coming out of the wall. I imagine there will either be a gap or the drywall around the wire will be rough.

Have you considered water sensors for the bathrooms, in the kitchen (dishwasher, under the sinks), near utility sinks, water heater? With new construction, I guess you won't have to worry about floods for a while, but...

I'm thinking about some water sensors myself, but unsure of where to position them - got to do some searching.

Have you considered water sensors for the bathrooms, in the kitchen (dishwasher, under the sinks), near utility sinks, water heater? With new construction, I guess you won't have to worry about floods for a while, but...

I'm thinking about some water sensors myself, but unsure of where to position them - got to do some searching.

I had them there in beginning. At $40 per per-wire I had to remove them for budget purposes.. Not optimal, but that was a trade-off I made.. I would rather have temp for HA to turn on fans, etc.. Rather than pre-wire for a water disaster..

I may reconsider in the future.. If I was doing the pre-wire myself it would have them.

Room Purpose: This is one of the rooms we are most excited about. Should have a nice view out into our buffer area - the room is also very warm and nice to be in.

H/A Equipment: The room has an occupancy sensor pre-wire, I placed it in the corner so it would not point pickup motion in the hallway. There are 4 cat5 cables run for ALC/OnQ. One for the recessed light and fan light, one for the fan, and one for a wall switch that will control lamps and one for a scene switch. One door contact.

Security Equipment:Glass Break Sensor8 Window Contacts

H/A Goals: (1) Turn on the lights when occupied. (2) Turn off lights when unoccupied for a duration. (3) Turn on the fan when occupied if temperature warrants air movement. (4) If outside temperature exceeds a threshold and A/C is on and door is open, and room not occupied notify home owner. (5) If outside temperature below a threshold and heat is on and room temperature exceeds a threshold and door is closed notify home owner if not occupied.

Basically - Lights on and off based on occupancy. If the room is heating up the rest of the house when A/C is on notify the homeowner to close the door and vice versa in the winter.

Nothing to add at the moment - but how much did the basment architectural plans cost, if you don't mind my asking? That future basement layout looks awesome, with the media room, workshop, billiards area, and kitchen. Putting the HA equipment in the mechanical room?